U.S. Ideals Meet Reality in Yemen

She worked with that parliament, worked with those women, built a good relationship with the government, stayed late, came in on weekends, oversaw a $2 million annual budget, increased her staff from five to 23, and watched democracy in Yemen inch forward, or since it's hard to tell sometimes, maybe backward. Unlike development work, in which a school is either built or it isn't, or charitable work, in which a village is either fed or it isn't, democracy work is hard to quantify. Either direction, though, it was work she loved, if not for the realities then for the possibilities.

Nowhere in any of this was a thought of working with tribes, which exist well beyond any of the core institutions NDI works with in the 50 countries worldwide where it operates.

One day in spring 2004, however, this began to change when several sheiks from Yemen's most isolated governorates, one of which is called Al Jawf and another of which is called Marib, approached NDI, said they were starting an organization to stop revenge-based killings, and asked for help. What surprised Madrid wasn't the request, because she frequently is asked to help, but that sheiks from such places would make contact with a U.S.-based organization.

What is known about Marib: It is where, in 2002, a pilotless U.S. drone being controlled remotely by the CIA fired a missile into a car on an isolated road, incinerating six suspected al Qaeda terrorists.

What is known about Al Jawf is even less. It is always described the same way, as a lawless place beyond any government control -- and a place Americans never go.

Madrid's answer was no, with an explanation that NDI's mission is to work with parliaments, women's groups and political parties, not to start organizations.

But the anthropologist in her was curious enough to suggest a meeting with some of the sheiks so they could tell her about their lives. A first meeting led to a second, and then a third. Madrid learned about the lack of functioning schools and health clinics, the lack of police and courts, the lack of pretty much everything. They told her about how the simplest disagreement between two members of different tribes could result in words being exchanged, shots being fired, roads being blocked, villages being evacuated, houses being destroyed, lives being lost and full-blown wars. They explained that families of the dead are supposed to be compensated with blood money, but since no one has any money, justice revolves around revenge killings, which is what they were hoping to solve.

The meetings continued through the spring, continued through the summer, and were still happening on Sept. 2, 2004, when, in Washington, the Office of Conflict Management and Mitigation, which is part of USAID's Bureau for Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance, announced it had $8 million to spend on projects to help end conflict and spread democracy to "geo-strategically important" countries and was now accepting applications.

The notice appeared on a Web site called Fedgrants.gov about 9 a.m.

A few minutes later, at NDI's headquarters on M Street NW:

"Sent: Thursday, September 02, 2004 9:16 AM. An announcement was just posted on FedGrants for DRL RFP for conflict management, mitigation and reconciliation. . . . Not sure if folks at NDI would be interested, but at least one of the objectives listed is related to our work. . . ." NDI wasn't the only organization monitoring Web sites for newly available government money; in Washington, such trolling is a profession. There was no way for NDI to know how many other people at competing organizations had seen the notice, but a guiding rule in a business as competitive as democracy promotion is to act fast. Soon a meeting was underway to decide which of NDI's country programs would formally apply for the grant, and soon after that Yemen became the choice.

That gave Madrid and a colleague from Washington two weeks to come up with a proposal. Which of course turned out to be about the sheiks because by this point Madrid had become convinced of their sincerity. "Of course they want money," she said. "Poor people want money. But they also want us to help them project their voice, they want training and they want access to the rest of the world."